The Port Fairy Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘I know what I’m about to say will sound callous.’

  ‘Pre-empting it doesn’t necessarily excuse it.’

  ‘I know, but I have to say this. Tom spent much longer in George Starling’s company than Joe did. He may have vital information that he gleaned that will lead us to Starling. If this period of clarity is a brief anomaly, I’m afraid I want Joe Sable to take advantage of it and see what Tom can remember.’

  ‘Even if it means forcing Tom to confront things he’s in no shape to confront?’

  Titus put down his razor. He concentrated on his reflection rather than catch his wife’s eye.

  ‘Yes, even if it means that. I’m sorry.’

  Maude stood up and left the bathroom without a word. Titus splashed cold water on his face. The chill of it against freshly scraped skin helped quell the sickening feeling in his stomach.

  AT RUSSELL STREET, Titus telephoned Victoria Barracks, but was unable to get through to any of the branches of Military Intelligence. The fact that he was an inspector in the Victoria Police didn’t wash with the woman on the switchboard. She had her orders, and no one whose name wasn’t on the list of authorised personnel in front of her was going to be put through to the Office for Native Policy in Mandated Territory. It didn’t matter that Titus had been able to name that ludicrous cover title. The woman offered to take his name, and perhaps someone would call him back.

  ‘Could you at least tell me if either Tom Chafer or Dick Goad is on the premises?’

  This was met with silence, followed by the non sequitur, ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’

  Titus hung up. He’d have to go down there and insist that he be admitted. Surely to God a murder inquiry meant something, even to those people.

  An hour later, Titus had turned off St Kilda Road and climbed the front steps to Victoria Barracks. He was seething. He flashed his credentials to the air force man on the front desk and said in a voice that brooked no opposition that he needed to see either Tom Chafer or Dick Goad, who worked in the directorate designated the Office for Native Policy in Mandated Territory. The matter was urgent, and he’d appreciate being given full co-operation. Obstructing a police investigation was a serious offence. The air force officer was unfazed by Titus’s anger. He was shouted at by someone almost every day. However, he picked up a telephone and asked to be put through to the requested department. There was a short wait. The officer put his hand over the mouthpiece.

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Titus Lambert of the Homicide Squad.’

  The officer’s eyebrows shot up. Someone began speaking at the other end of the telephone.

  ‘Mr Chafer? There’s a gentleman here who says he has urgent business with you — an Inspector Lambert from Homicide. Yes, I’ve seen his credentials. All right, I’ll tell him.’

  He replaced the phone in its cradle.

  ‘He says he’ll come down.’

  Titus’s anger had now subsided. It was a shame that it was Tom Chafer who was on duty. Titus had found his manner objectionable. He predicted, correctly, that Chafer would keep him waiting. He crossed from where he’d been sitting to the officer on the desk.

  ‘When Mr Chafer arrives, tell him I’m outside.’

  ‘That’s a bit irregular, sir.’

  ‘Not for me. Flight Lieutenant, is it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’ll be on the other side of St Kilda Road, sitting on the bench directly opposite.’

  ‘He won’t be happy.’

  ‘Mr Chafer’s happiness is immaterial to me.’

  It gave Titus unseemly pleasure to sit across from Victoria Barracks and watch Tom Chafer duck traffic as he crossed St Kilda Road. He was still unhealthily thin, his suit still looked too big for him, and he still wore a thin, blond moustache. His hair wasn’t quite as closely cropped as it had been when he’d first entered Titus’s office on Christmas Day. His prominent ears were red, either with indignation or the heat, when he sat down next to Titus. He was in his late twenties, but his self-importance extinguished any deference he ought to have shown.

  ‘I don’t appreciate being summoned.’

  ‘I think when we first met I suggested you should make an effort not to be an arsehole. That suggestion still holds.’

  Titus stood up and began walking towards the Shrine of Remembrance. Chafer was obliged to follow.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘I want to know if you have any intelligence on George Starling. He’s a dangerous, loose cannon, and he poses a serious risk to Sergeant Sable.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s issued threats, and is the main suspect in an arson attack on Sergeant Sable’s flat.’

  ‘All aspects of the case involving Ptolemy Jones, George Starling, and the others are now covered by the Crimes Act, and I’m not at liberty to discuss them with you.’

  Chafer’s pomposity pushed Titus’s patience almost to breaking point.

  ‘I’d rather discuss this matter with your partner, Mr Goad.’

  ‘Dick Goad is not my partner, and he’s been moved into another department. He’d be unable to help you.’

  ‘This is intolerable. One of the people you were investigating has threatened the life of one of my officers.’

  ‘We’re not investigating George Starling — that much I can tell you. He has no affiliations that we can find with any known Hitler sympathisers. He is, as you say, a loose cannon. My job is to deal with matters of national security. Your job is to find common or garden murderers. George Starling is a common or garden thug. Intelligence has no further interest in him.’

  ‘I need to know who his associates are, and who he’d be most likely to run to for shelter.’

  ‘I’ve already told you — as far as we’re concerned, he has no associates. His only associate was Ptolemy Jones, and Jones is dead. End of story.’

  ‘You’re an extremely unpleasant young man, Mr Chafer.’

  ‘And you’re wasting my time.’

  Chafer stared at Titus blankly, and began walking back towards Victoria Barracks. To calm down, Titus walked around the Shrine.

  GEORGE STARLING STOOD under the shower for a wasteful ten minutes and thought about what he should do next. He knew no one in Melbourne now that Jones was dead. There’d been a couple of blokes who’d hung around Jones and talked politics, but he had no idea how to contact them. They came together to discuss National Socialism, and then they went away. He couldn’t even recall any of their surnames.

  Maybe he could buy a car. A new car was out of the question, of course — even if one were available, it would require too much scrutiny by the authorities for his liking. However, a secondhand car was a possibility. There’d be no need to go through the proper channels for that. A private car was a liability, though. There were no spare parts, no tyres to replace old or damaged ones, and the petrol ration allowed no more than 80 miles a month. That was barely enough to keep the battery alive. The motorcycle was useful, but it made him conspicuous, and if it broke down he’d have to abandon it. Once he’d dealt with Joe Sable he might return to Port Fairy. Maybe he’d invest in a couta boat, or a bigger one — one that could go further out. He’d hire fishermen. He didn’t know if this was even possible, but as hot water relaxed his shoulders, he imagined himself swaggering along the wharf, checking the catch, calculating his cut. You’d never get him out on one of those bloody boats, though. He didn’t want to work that hard. Peter Hurley would be surprised to see his old employee running things, and Peter Hurley might need to be persuaded to give him a cut of his black-market profits. Not much; just enough to guarantee his silence. Hurley’d buck at that. Well, George Starling had a fair idea about how to stop people bucking. These thoughts, fanciful though they might be, were pleasurable.
r />   He towelled himself dry and assessed himself in the mirror. He’d done this yesterday, fully clothed. Now he was naked. There was no fat on his body. It was hard and well proportioned; darkly hairy, yes, but so what? It was a body that wouldn’t let him down. It would respond to whatever demands he made of it. It was a body that could subdue people, injure them, kill them. He got dressed and went downstairs to the hotel barber for a shave. As he’d done the previous morning, he then entered the dining room for breakfast, and in a nod to his Port Fairy fantasy, he ordered fish — Sweet William, grilled and dressed with a burnt butter sauce and chives. The waiter who served him volunteered that this was meant to be his day off. The waiter who should be here hadn’t bothered to show up.

  After breakfast, Starling returned to his room. He flicked again through the folder of newspaper clippings he’d taken from Joe’s flat. He’d become so used to reading about Allied victories in the papers that he’d accepted that Germany, and by extension National Socialism, would be defeated. But here in this folder was such a concentration of news about successful measures taken against the Jews that he began to think that readers of The Age and The Argus were being duped by propaganda. Perhaps the war wasn’t being lost after all, and perhaps the healthy state of National Socialism could be seen in these reports of exterminations.

  With Jones gone, his ideas lacked clarity and purpose. He needed to talk to someone about this, to show these clippings to people who would be keen to form a branch of the party. There were people he knew of in Warrnambool; they used to gather at the Starlings’ farm. He couldn’t remember any of their names, but he knew where one of them lived. It was in a house that was perched on a cliff above the Hopkins River. He was an old man, but Starling thought he might be worth a visit. He wouldn’t tell him that he was John Starling’s son, and as he bore no resemblance to the child this man might have noticed at the farm, he would pass himself off as someone else.

  He felt in his pocket for the identity cards of the men he’d killed. He hadn’t bothered to look at them yet, but now he took them out. He put Steven McNamara’s aside — he was too young. The barman, though, was born in 1914, which made him 30. Starling was 28, but he could easily pass for an older man. Sturt Menadue — that was his name. Starling spoke the name out loud. Sturt Menadue. It was a good name. Sturt Menadue sounded like the kind of man who’d wear decent clothes. Sturt Menadue, he said again. Mr Menadue would be leaving the Windsor Hotel that afternoon. He’d signed the register under his own name. That had been unavoidable. Starling wanted to put distance between himself and the place where Steven McNamara worked. The police would eventually discover who their John Doe was, and they’d come sniffing around the Windsor. He’d move to another place, and there he’d register as Sturt Menadue. He needed to buy a suitcase now that he had several changes of shirts, trousers, underwear, socks, and two pairs of shoes. He’d bought his clothes at different shops, using almost all the clothing coupons that remained in the books he’d taken from Sable’s flat and his father’s house.

  Late on Sunday afternoon, an elegantly dressed man, wearing a soft, grey fedora and carrying an expensive suitcase, walked into the foyer of the Australia Hotel in Collins Street, and registered in the name of Sturt Menadue.

  –10–

  ROSE ABBOT SAT in a pew at the back of St Patrick’s church. She could see her Aunt Aggie with Matthew and Dorothy in the front pew. It would have been Matthew’s decision to sit at the front. The Abbots were Port Fairy royalty, or so Matthew thought, and the front was their rightful place. Rose had arrived at Mass late, and she intended to leave early, after the necessary witnessing of transubstantiation. She didn’t want Aggie to see her and smugly suppose that Rose had taken her advice about attending Mass. She’d come to Port Fairy two days in a row — a rare occurrence — because Timothy Harrison’s words had eaten away at her overnight, and she needed to talk to Johanna Scotney. John had complained about the unnecessary use of fuel, but Rose had lied and said that if he wanted a cake for afternoon tea, she’d have to get flour, and that was all there was to it.

  ‘You should’ve got it yesterday, and where’ll you get it on a Sunday anyway?’

  ‘Aunt Aggie — we’ve given her enough eggs to make a hundred cakes. She won’t begrudge us a bit of flour.’

  John snorted.

  Father Brennan’s sermon was short and uninspired. All his sermons were uninspired. Unfortunately, as John Abbot had said more than once, they weren’t all short. Rose wasn’t listening, in any case. He said something about the bushfires, and there was a reminder to keep Mrs Watson in the congregation’s prayers. She was poorly, and was in hospital in Warrnambool, and wasn’t expected to make a recovery, although miracles did happen, and she asked especially that people pray to St Ursula, who’d intervened on her behalf in the past.

  Rose slipped out as soon as Communion had begun. She didn’t know Johanna’s address so she walked to the wharf, assuming that someone there would know it. The wharf was quiet. Three couta boats were tied up, and in one of them a man was coiling rope. Rose asked him if he knew Johanna Scotney.

  ‘Ought to,’ he said. ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Scotney. I’ve heard so much about you from Johanna.’

  ‘Oh yes, and how’s that then?’

  He smiled up at her. His weatherbeaten face would have been attractive, except that it showed the strains of a lifetime of fishing.

  ‘I’m Rose Abbot. Johanna works on our farm during the week.’

  Tom Scotney climbed up onto the wharf.

  ‘Tom Scotney,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Abbot. Johanna seems to be enjoying the work.’

  Rose was relieved. Tom Scotney was showing no evidence of having been told anything unpleasant about the Abbot farm.

  ‘I was wanting to call on her at home, if that’s all right — only I don’t have the address.’

  ‘Give me a tick to finish up here, and I’ll walk you there. Lunch’ll be on if you’re hungry.’

  ‘Thank you, but I really need to get back. I just need to talk to Johanna for a minute.’

  ‘You’re not sacking her, are you?’

  ‘Oh no, no. Nothing like that — just some small thing.’

  ‘Good-oh.’

  The Scotneys’ house was a ten-minute walk from the wharf. It was run down, but respectable, and it needed money spent on it that the Scotneys didn’t have; building materials were scarce anyway. Tom Scotney opened the front door and ushered Rose through to the small front room. Mrs Scotney, who’d heard two people come into the house, hurried to see who the unexpected visitor was. When she saw it was a woman, and before she’d been introduced, she made it clear to her husband, with an eloquent grimace, that he ought to have given her time to tidy up. Rose understood this at once, and immediately complimented Mrs Scotney on the room’s furnishings.

  ‘I’m Rose Abbot,’ she added.

  Mrs Scotney was uncertain how to proceed. What did you say to a Catholic woman who turned up to your house uninvited and unannounced?

  ‘I suppose you want to talk to Johanna,’ she said, as politely as she could manage. Rose, who wasn’t fussed by other people’s religious affiliations, couldn’t guess at the cause of Mrs Scotney’s discomfort. She put it down to having been caught off guard. She was saved from further awkwardness by Johanna, who stood at the door of the front room and said, ‘Mrs Abbot.’

  Rose could see her face, and she could see that it was ashen. Rose read in that face that Timothy Harrison’s blurted accusation had substance to it. She asked Johanna if she might speak to her for just a moment, outside. Mr Scotney had gone through into the kitchen, and Mrs Scotney, who wasn’t able to see her daughter’s face, said rather stiffly that Mrs Abbot would be welcome to speak with Johanna in the comfort of the front room. She was a woman of considerable Christian charity, after all. She didn’t go
so far as to offer tea, reminded Johanna that lunch was almost on the table, and left the two of them alone.

  Rose sat down. ‘Has my husband behaved towards you in any way that has upset you?’ she asked.

  Johanna was unable to speak.

  ‘I met the boy you’re stepping out with, Timothy, yesterday. Well, I didn’t actually meet him so much as run into him, and when I introduced myself, he said something. I can’t remember the exact words, but he said something like, “Johanna told me about your husband.” What did that mean?’

  Rose realised that she sounded prim.

  ‘Timothy had no right to say that, Mrs Abbot.’

  ‘Because you told him something in confidence, or because he was making something up?’

  ‘I don’t want to lose my position. We need the money.’

  ‘You won’t lose your position, Johanna. You have my word. What has my husband done? Please.’

  ‘Mr Abbot hasn’t really done anything. I told Timothy that. Mr Abbot says things sometimes — crude things — but he’s never touched me, or anything like that.’

  ‘So he’s been vulgar and suggestive?’

  ‘Yes. I know it’s just words, but I told Timothy that I didn’t like it. That’s all.’

  ‘I saw you running away yesterday, and you were very upset. So that’s not quite all, is it?’

  Johanna shook her head.

  ‘What else did you tell Timothy?’

  ‘I told him about Mr Todd.’

  ‘Matthew?’

  Johanna subdued her emotions by speaking matter-of-factly, as if she were reciting a shopping list.

  ‘Mr Todd has been making lewd suggestions to me for several weeks. The things he says are disgusting and insulting. I think he thinks they’re all right.’

  ‘He would.’ Rose’s sour note encouraged Johanna.

  ‘He grabbed me on Friday and touched me in private places, and he forced my hand against his trousers. He tried to kiss me, but Mr Abbot came out of the house, and he stopped. We heard the door slam. He said something awful about Mr Abbot, and he said that the next time he came to the farm I’d better be more co-operative or he’d make sure I lost my job. And he said that he could make sure that none of my dad’s catch got to market. I told all that to Timothy, and he thought I must have done something to lead Mr Todd on. That’s why I was so upset. How could he say that?’